A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 | Page 8

much by caresses as by words, they were both stronger, and could look
more calmly at the calamities which threatened them with every evil
except that of separation.

"You will write to Mr. Strafford?" Lucia asked.
"Yes; but first we must know certainly."
"And how to do that?"
"There will be no difficulty to-morrow. Mr. Leigh is sure to hear the
particulars. I will go and ask him about them."
"You do not mean to tell him?"
"No; it will be easy enough without that, to ask about a subject which
every one will be talking of."
"Mamma, I can go to Mr. Leigh as well as you. I can go better, for I
shall not suffer as you will, and I can bring you home a faithful account
of what I hear."
"Darling, all this is new to you. I have had to serve a long
apprenticeship to learn self-restraint."
Lucia laughed bitterly. "See the advantage of my Indian blood," she
said. "Trust me, mother, I will be as steady as those ancestors of mine
who bore torture without flinching."
Mrs. Costello bent down and kissed her child's forehead.
"Yours is a better heroism, Lucia; for mental pain is harder to bear than
physical, and you would suffer to save me."
"We suffer together, mamma. I must take my share. To-morrow I shall
go, as usual, to Mr. Leigh's, and bring back all I can learn. But he will
wonder to see me, and still more if he hears that we are not going
away."
"You must simply tell him our journey is put off. He will ask no
questions, and only think I am very dilatory and changeable. No one
else is likely to think of us at all for a day or two to come."

They were silent again for a little while. Lucia's thoughts, relieved from
the first heavy pressure on them by the very fact of having spoken,
began to turn from the criminal to the victim; from their own share in
the horror to that of others. One thing seemed to stand out clear and
plain from the confusion which still enveloped all else. She, the
daughter of the murderer, could never again meet the wife of the
murdered man as a friend. If the punishment of the father descended to
the children, did not their guilt descend too? Already she seemed to feel
the stain of blood upon her hand, and to shrink from herself, as all
innocent persons ought to do, henceforward. And Bella, her old
companion and friend, must shrink from her most of all; the very spirit
of the dead would surely rise up to forbid all intercourse between them.
Lucia had not boasted of her self-command without reason. A mind
naturally strong, and supported both by pride and affection, had
enabled her to meet with courage the bitterness and misery of the past
weeks. But she was only a girl still, and had not learned to rule her
thoughts as well as her looks and words. So if they grew morbid, and
her dreary imagination sometimes tortured her uselessly and cruelly, it
was no great wonder. She could suffer and be silent; but she had not yet
learnt so to rule her spirit as to save herself needless suffering.
Thus the very intensity of her sympathy for Bella only reacted in
loathing and horror of herself; and she had begun to try to devise means
for carrying out that avoidance of all most nearly connected with the
dead, which seemed to her an imperative duty, when she was startled
by her mother's voice.
"If it is he," she said--and it seemed that they both shrank from any
plainer expression of their thoughts than these vague phrases--"if it is
he our hardest task is before us. How will you bear, Lucia, to meet
them all again?"
"Mother, I cannot! Surely you do not think of it. How can we"--she
shuddered as she spoke--"how can we go again among any innocent
people?"
"My child, we must. More than that, we must keep our secret, if we can,

still."
"But Bella? Mother, how can I look at her--a widow--and know who I
am, and who has done it?"
"Listen to me, Lucia. My poor child, your burden has been heavy lately;
do not make it heavier than it need be. The crime and the horror are bad
enough, but we have no share in them. No; think of it reasonably. The
wife and child of a criminal, even where there has been daily
association between them, are not condemned, but rather pitied. No
mind, but one cruelly prejudiced, would brand them with his guilt. Do
not punish yourself, then, where others would acquit you. But, indeed, I
need not tell you how our very separation